THIS is what democracy looks like!

Chants of "This is what democracy looks like! This is what equality looks like! This is what feminism looks like!" rang throughout downtown DC today as hundreds of thousands of women, men, and children marched on Washington. Pussyhats in every shade of pink spangled the crowd, while a vast array of sharp, creative signs bounced up and down like so many babies on mamas' hips. 

Over the past few days, it came to pass that my undergraduate thesis advisor decided to march in DC rather than St. Louis (she now teaches at Wash U). Marie was one of the best professors I had at Northwestern, a powerful, inspiring role model, and a sharp-as-a-tack woman with a real wit. She came into my life as I was really starting to figure out who I was and who I wanted to be. To this day I am grateful for her presence during those years.

We have stayed in touch over the years, at times more regularly than others as happens with lives and children and moves, and the spot in my heart she stole back in 1996 has remained hers. So it goes without saying that when I offered her a place to stay while she was here for the march and she said, "I'd love that." I was thrilled. It'd been about fourteen years since we'd last seen each other.

This morning, as we donned our pussyhats, gathered up our signs, water bottles, snacks, and phone chargers, and headed to catch our bus with a thousand other supporters of Congressman Raskin (MDs 8th!), it occurred to me that participating in the Women's March with a woman who played such a role in the development of my self as woman was extraordinarily meaningful

As Marie and I marched, every bit of the heartbreak and sadness I struggled with yesterday was replaced today with hope. With the aggregate hope and determination and strength and fire of people who are appropriately outraged and disgusted and who know that we must be and are better than the petty, ignorant, pathetic, yappy toddler the electoral college elected.

The crowd, more than double what the organizers expected, was...gosh, words almost fail me right now. A huge, teeming mass of people with signs, strollers, even dogs, was polite, generous, friendly, determined. They were from all over this country, they were straight, gay, trans, they were young, old, black, white, Asian, Muslim, Jewish, progressive Christian, atheist. There was not a hint of violence or bad behavior (other than the Trump supporter who was sternly reprimanded). There was respect. They were happy. Together we felt hope.

Because hundreds of thousands turned out, we filled the march route without moving. The same was true in Chicago. The marching part of the march was called off. We became, instead, a glorious free-form rally, covering the Mall and blocks of Independence and Constitutions Avenues among many others. 

EXTREME hat tip to Chang W. Lee of the NY Times; please don't mind that I borrowed your gorgeous photograph (but of course if you do, I'll take it down.)
Women's March in DC

The real work begins tomorrow. The hope will at times be hard to maintain in the face of lies about inauguration crowd sizes and attempts to fully discredit the press, further investigation into Trump-Putin collaboration and the clown car of cabinet nominees bumbling through their hearings. In the face of the misogynistic backlash of tweets that has already begun. I pity and am sickened by those deplorable men, but their pathetic words can't diminish the joy and awe and anticipation I felt today.

In some way, I believe the outpouring of righteous reaction today changed the course of things (I hope, I think), started to right our dangerously listing ship. I am grateful to the organizers of the march, to everyone who either marched today or were with us in spirit, who knitted and shipped us pussyhats, who made signs, who inspired signs, who organized the more than 670 sister events both nationally and and internationally who remained calm and warm and dignified and strong.

We are the resistance! And we are on the right side of history.

Hawks and viruses and dreaded inaugurations

Today I wanted to write about H is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald's masterfully written book about one woman's grief journey following her father's death. An ardent, experienced naturalist, Macdonald obtains a beautiful hawk, Mabel, and we follow them through their first year hawking together, through Helen's mourning and depression and processing the loss of her father, and through a book, The Goshawk by T.H. White, that both captured Macdonald's imagination as a child and also troubled her.

I started reading it just after last fall's presidential election. The timing was coincidental but in the curious way that things are coincidental when they seem to make sense and have been fated. 

With sadness, I finished H is for Hawk last weekend when Tom and I were away, and had plans to tell you all about it today. I found it both mesmerizing and healing, and if that sounds good to you, add it to your list! Then I was going to get dressed in a new ball gown and tonight go with friends to the Peace Ball being held at the Museum of African American History and Culture. We were going to celebrate tolerance and diversity and to resist the black cloud sweeping over DC tomorrow.

Most unfortunately, though, I have been sick in bed for all but an hour and a half today. Thirty minutes desperately trying to get the kids ready for school this morning (Tom was traveling for work) and an unpleasant hour at Urgent Care tonight. 

I'm too wiped out to tell you more about the book and why it was my favorite read since All the Light We Cannot See and it is with great sadness that I keep casting my eyes toward that pretty gown hanging in a plastic garment bag in my closet.

It seems today has played out personally all the awfulness so many of us have felt since November 9, the worry and shock we have repeatedly experienced as the Vulgar Yam appoints insultingly unqualified cabinet nominees, and the dread we feel about tomorrow's inauguration and the years to follow.

I will not be watching any part of tomorrow's spectacle. Instead I'll be making signs for Saturday's March. I'll be resting in the hopes of proving the doctor wrong who tonight recommended against me going. I'll be sending out vibes of appreciation to the progressive city in which I live. And I will think about how mightily I have been fighting and how strenuously I will continue to resist. 

On truth, and acting on it

"Fact-check your memory, and bullshit-check your motives."
-Dinty W. Moore (writer, teacher)

"Complacency and cynicism are our biggest enemies."
-Lissa Muscatine (former HRC speechwriter and Washington Post journalist; co-owner of Politics & Prose bookstore in D.C.)

"And they are illusions."
-Michael Waldman (President of the Brennan Center of Justice at NYU)

I spent this frigid weekend non-parentally adulting much more than I usually do. It was a delight.

Yesterday I attended a creative nonfiction workshop in D.C., led by Dinty Moore (founder and editor of the literary magazine, Brevity, amongst other things) and Lee Gutkind (founder and editor of the lit mag, Creative Nonfiction, also amongst other things). Not only did I see in person three friends with whom I mostly interact online (writing groups), but also I felt like a student again, all note-taking, and coffee-drinking, and thinking until my brain ached. I loved every second.

Today, I brought Jack to the first of a series of teach-ins hosted by a D.C. gem, Politics & Prose bookstore. Moderated by Lissa Muscatine, panelists David Cole (the ACLU's National Legal Director), Todd Cox (Director of Policy at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund), and Michael Waldman (President of the Brennan Center of Justice at NYU) discussed American civil liberties, past and future, in the context of Trump and the 2016 election. (To watch the event, click here.)

Jack was so engaged in the election that I thought he'd be keen on this teach-in. He was not. He did, however, appear to read the entirety of the new DK book about Rogue One while I enjoyed nearly 90 minutes of the panel discussion, so win/win. Bonus: we left with an excellent chocolate chip cookie and a copy of The Phantom Tollbooth, yet another book I missed during my own childhood and so am reading now with J. 

Both the workshop and the teach-in were engaging and inspiring, and were I made to sum both up with one sentence, I'd say: Find the truth and write about/act on it.

Truth is what happened, what is and/or what is provable. In theory, truth shouldn't be elusive. And yet, because we are human, truths often appear to be mercurial shape-shifters. My memory or yours? The lenses provided by geography, faith, peers, experience. Those things color truths, but do they negate them?

It may appear that truth is so malleable, it may feel that it is, but I believe the truth is always there: we simply (never so simple, really) must acknowledge it. To live honestly, we must support and defend it.

Waldman began by reminding us of the "consent of the governed" condition noted in the Declaration; it is a condition generally considered necessary for a government to be legitimate. Since our founders argued over this, our country has continued to, fighting to uphold the institutional arrangements that protect our democracy and civil liberties.

We have failed at times, refusing, for example, the right to vote to too many for too long.

But what do we do when advances made are clawed back? When the Voting Rights Act that tried to mandate and ensure voting rights for African Americans is gutted, when not one question in 26 presidential debates asked about that backwards movement, when an unqualified man known to cheat others and who has real and substantiated racist claims against him in his past then becomes president? What to do when he then nominates a hyper-Right senator barred previously from judgeship because of racism to serve as the Attorney General of the U.S., a position that requires fair, unbiased judicial ability?

What do we do? We fight. 

In the same way many writers struggle to candidly share their truths--knowing that is the way to heal and strengthen and live most honestly--we citizens must now fight to do the same for our country.

"Our concern and anger is only effective if we fight," David Cole said. Previous presidents "only made changes to unpopular moves when people forced it." This is especially critical now, when it's quite possible that the only checks and balances against the incoming administration are us, the people.

This will take loud, unceasing efforts at local, state, and federal levels.
It will take us holding our Congressional representatives' feet to the blazing fire of truth and justice and courage, to demand that they do their jobs which are on our behalf. It will require some of us to run for office because our elected officials are failing.

It will require supporting real journalism and people who work in conjunction with them. We will need to stop falling for superficial, click-bait nonsense and instead be willing to invest more time in real reading and questioning and learning.
It demands that we stop, here and now, false equivalencies of candidates and behaviors.
It will take all of us defending and shoring up expansive societal norms and civil institutions that protect the rights of many versus the desires of a few. 
It will demand regular reminders to those who wish to constrict others' rights that "your liberty is my liberty." (-Todd Cox)

It will require us to be brave and stalwart, to expect backlash and to be prepared for it. If we give our consent via silence or inaction, then we are complicit in allowing ignorant, unqualified, mean-spirited, non patriots to "lead" us. 

I thought about all of this all day. About how truth is one thing we should all cherish and hold tight to, even when it's uncomfortable. Without norms, without empathy, without a shared commitment to each other, our democracy will crumble. Our country will. Brave are those who work, quietly or loudly, alone or with others, towards a truthful tomorrow.

And then there's Meryl. Please watch her powerful speech at tonight's Golden Globes.